In the opening chapter of the Confession, the divines of Westminster included a clause that implied that there would no longer be any special immediate revelation from God. Means by which God had once communicated the divine will, such as dreams, visions, and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, were said to be no longer available. However, many of the authors of the WCF accepted that prophecy continued in their time, and a number of them apparently believed that disclosure of God's will through dreams, visions, and angelic communication remained possible. How is the cessationist clause of WCF 1:1 to be read in the light of these claims? This book reconciles this paradox in a detailed study of the writings of the authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

This book provides an overview of the establishment and use of parish libraries in early modern England and includes a thematic analysis of surviving marginalia and readers' marks. This book is the first direct and detailed analysis of parish libraries in early modern England and uses a case-study approach to the examination of foundation practices, physical and intellectual accessibility, the nature of the collections, and the ways in which people used these libraries and read their books.

In Christ’s Prayer before His Passion , a major work consisting of 145 sermons, Anthony Burgess expounds such topics as God the Father and God the Son, the love of God, providence over death, election, the deity of Christ, the Mediator as teacher and priest and king, union with Christ, the knowledge of God, eternal life, justification, sanctification, obedience, separation from the world, faith, prayer, perseverance, worship, Christian unity, gospel ministry, and the glory of heaven. All these truths are discussed by this judicious Puritan divine according to the order of the text in John 17. Burgess rightly regarded John 17 as a mountaintop of divine revelation, “a pearl in the gold” of the Bible. He asserts that the Lord offers this prayer in the presence of His disciples so that those who hear it (and later, those who read it) might be filled with joy. This prayer is especially significant because Jesus utters it the night before His crucifixion, which is the climax of His earthly work. Burgess thus asks his readers, “If the words of a dying man are much to be regarded, how much more of a dying Christ?” In this light, Anthony Burgess expounds John 17 as the prayer of Christ, both as our Mediator—if we are believers—and as the model of a godly man. Originally published as CXLV Expository Sermons upon the Whole 17th Chapter of the Gospel according to John: or, Christ’s Prayer before His Passion Explicated, and both Practically and Polemically Improved (London: Abraham Miller for Thomas Underhill, 1656).

When we approach such men as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and John Calvin, we are approaching two men who were not only significant figures of their time but figures standing on opposite shorelines of the influence and impact of Scholasticism, as well as a tumultuous decline in orthodoxy. Despite this reality, what is most compelling about these two men is the continuity of their developed thought, even though they were worlds apart, separated by time. This continuity is most assuredly grounded in their historical sources, and, more importantly, their faithful handling of God’s word. That continuity, although not point for point, was rather for the significant part of the structure and content—sum and substance—of the twofold knowledge of God and self. For both of these men, this doctrine was fundamental, permeating the whole of their world and life philosophy. Bernard and Calvin clearly saw the implications of this twofold knowledge. These implications manifest in the realm of various doctrines and the network of their system of thought. This book seeks to explore those various components of their twofold knowledge of God and self, as well as the implications in the realm of experiential Christianity.

Prophecy and millennial speculation are often seen as having played a key role in early European engagements with the new world, from Columbus’s use of the predictions of Joachim of Fiore, to the puritan ‘Errand into the Wilderness’. Yet examinations of such ideas have sometimes presumed an overly simplistic application of these beliefs in the lives of those who held to them. This book explores the way in which prophecy and eschatological ideas influenced poets, politicians, theologians, and ordinary people in the Atlantic world from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. Chapters cover topics ranging from messianic claimants to the Portuguese crown to popular prophetic almanacs in eighteenth-century New England; from eschatological ideas in the poetry of George Herbert and Anne Bradstreet, to the prophetic speculation surrounding the Evangelical revivals. It highlights the ways in which prophecy and eschatology played a key role in the early modern Atlantic world.

AQUINAS AMONG THE PROTESTANTS This major new book provides an introduction to Thomas Aquinas’s influence on Protestantism. The editors, both noted commentators on Aquinas, bring together a group of influential scholars to demonstrate the ways that Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed thinkers have analyzed and used Thomas through the centuries. Later chapters also explore how today’s Protestants might appropriate the work of Aquinas to address a number of contemporary theological and philosophical issues. The authors set the record straight and disavow the widespread impression that Aquinas is an irrelevant figure for the history of Protestant thought. This assumption has dominated not only Protestant historiography but also Roman Catholic accounts of the Reformation and Protestant intellectual life. The book opens the possibility for contemporary reception, engagement, and critique and even intra-Protestant relations and includes: Information on the fruitful appropriation of Aquinas in Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians over the centuries Important essays from leading scholars on the teachings of Aquinas New perspectives on Thomas Aquinas’s position as a towering figure in the history of Christian thought Aquinas Among the Protestants is a ground-breaking and interdenominational work for students and scholars of Thomas Aquinas and theology more generally.

Spiritually there is a great hunger today for contemplative and more satisfying experiences with God. Puritanism might seem to be an unlikely source for this, yet few groups in the history of Christian spirituality have written more extensively or wisely on the subject. Isaac Ambrose (1604-64), a relatively forgotten English Puritan, developed a theological foundation for the spiritual life based upon the Christian's intimate union with Christ, which the Puritans often called "spiritual marriage." Schwanda demonstrates that this vibrant relationship of union and communion with Jesus, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was manifested in a deep contemplative piety of gazing lovingly and gratefully upon God. At the same time, Ambrose did not neglect loving his neighbors. This study reveals how heavenly meditation was one of the significant practices engaged by Ambrose to cultivate spiritual intimacy and enjoyment of God. Further, his experiential reading of Scripture, in particular the Song of Songs, provided him with a language of ravishment and delight in God. This book provides a distinctively Protestant foundation for recovering the contemplative life while recognizing the significant contributions of the Western Catholic tradition.

The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology argues that the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle of Saint John the Evangelist were so influential during the early modern period in England as to share with Pauline theology pride of place as leading apostolic texts on matters Christological, sacramental, pneumatological, and political. The book argues further that, in several instances, Johannine theology is more central than both Pauline theology and the Synoptic theology of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, particularly with regard to early modern polemicizing on the Trinity, distinctions between agape and eros, and the ideologies of radical dissent, especially the seventeenth-century antinomian challenge of free grace to traditional Puritan Pietism. In particular, early modern religious poetry, including works by Robert Southwell, George Herbert, John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne, and Anna Trapnel, embraces a distinctive form of Johannine devotion that emphasizes the divine rather than human nature of Christ; the belief that salvation is achieved more through revelation than objective atonement and expiatory sin; a realized eschatology; a robust doctrine of assurance and comfort; and a stylistic and rhetorical approach to representing these theological features that often emulates John's mode of discipleship misunderstanding and dramatic irony. Early modern Johannine devotion assumes that religious lyrics often express a revelatory poetics that aims to clarify, typically through the use of dramatic irony, some of the deepest mysteries of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle.

The aim of systematic theology is to engage not only the head but also the heart and hands. Only recently has the church compartmentalized these aspects of life—separating the academic discipline of theology from the spiritual disciplines of faith and obedience. This multivolume work brings together rigorous historical and theological scholarship with spiritual disciplines and practical insights—characterized by a simple, accessible, comprehensive, Reformed, and experiential approach. In this volume, Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley shift from the doctrine of God (theology proper) to the doctrine of humanity (anthropology) and the doctrine of Christ (Christology). This extensive reformed theology explores the Bible's teaching about who we are and why we were created, as well as who Jesus is and why his divinity is essential to the Christian faith.